herding cats
herding cats's JournalA man from Liberia comes to the ER presenting Ebola like symptoms
He told the staff where he'd been, and they sent him home with a round of antibiotics instead of admitting, isolating and testing him. That's incompetence beyond what I was expecting in this incident.
Health officials in Texas revealed on Wednesday that the first patient to be diagnosed with Ebola outside Africa told hospital staff on his first visit that he had recently travelled from Liberia, where the disease is prevalent, but was nevertheless sent home.
An official at the Dallas hospital where he is being treated told a news conference that the patient told an emergency-room nurse about his travel history. But the information was not shared widely enough with the medical team treating him, and he was diagnosed as suffering from a “low-grade common viral disease”.
The man, identified on Wednesday by his family as Thomas Eric Duncan, was sent home with a course of antibiotics, an outcome that the hospital described as a matter of “regret”.
We can do better than this, we have to do better than this. There's a chance, a better than slim one, other cases of Ebola will be the result of this incompetent action by the hospital staff. That's inexcusable.
White House preparing to defy GOP in pushing through Holder replacement
Though refusing to speculate on the exact timing of a replacement for Eric Holder, who announced his resignation on Thursday, Obama administration officials began laying the ground for such a strategy by listing precedents under previous presidents. The stakes have been heightened after a recent rule change under Senate majority leader Harry Reid which means that only 51 votes are required to confirm White House nominations rather than the 60 previously needed to avoid a filibuster.
The examples being cited by the White House include Robert Gates, defence secretary under George W Bush, who was confirmed in December 2006 despite the Republicans losing control of the Senate in the previous month’s elections.
“There is a precedent for presidents making important cabinet nominations and counting on Congress to confirm them promptly, even in the context of a lame duck session, if necessary,” Obama spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters on Friday.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/26/eric-holder-replacement-lame-duck-confirmation-vote
'It was a crank call': family seeks action against 911 caller in Walmart shooting
Source: The Guardian
The family of a young black man who was killed by police in an Ohio Walmart while holding an unloaded BB rifle and speaking on his cellphone have called for action to be taken against a 911 caller who claimed he was pointing the gun at people.
John Crawford III was shot dead last month by an officer responding to an emergency call made by Ronald Ritchie, a shopper standing 100ft away, who repeatedly stated to the dispatcher that Crawford was pointing the air rifle at customers.
Surveillance footage and audio recordings released after a grand jury declined to indict the officer who shot Crawford showed that Crawford was holding the rifle at his side and pointing it to the floor at the time when Ritchie alleged that “he just pointed it at, like, two children”.
Crawford’s father and the family’s attorney said that Ritchie, 24, should be questioned by police over the discrepancy between the footage and his allegation, which he made about 80 seconds before Crawford was shot, and confirmed when asked soon after. Knowingly “making false alarms” is a crime under Ohio law punishable by a fine or jail sentence.
Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/26/walmart-ohio-shooting-charges-911-calller-john-crawford
Conservative school board revolution: Column
In conservative states and districts, Republicans have been stacking school boards with radical right wingers, with an eye towards rewriting textbook and educational standards so they are more amendable to the conservative cause.
While conservative attacks on science in classrooms get a lot of attention, the latest trend is, if anything, even more worrisome: Conservative school board officials are quietly trying to rewrite history and social studies curriculum, erasing parts of history they don't like and simply making up history they wish was true.
Students and teachers at Evergreen High School in Jefferson County, Colorado, are fighting back. Conservative school board member Julie Williams proposed a change to the school's history curriculum that appears aimed at replacing education with old-fashioned, Soviet-style propaganda, except in this case in the support of capitalism and American conservatism, instead of communism.
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Of course, as noted by Colorado Public Radio, the language being fought over is nearly identical to similar language that was adopted by the Texas State Board of Education, setting the standard for all kids in the state. And what has happened in Texas shows that the students and teachers protesting in Colorado are right: These standards open up the door not just to right wing indoctrination in lieu of education, but to outright lying to students.
The Texas Freedom Network gathered together a group of experts in history and political science to review social studies texts under review in the state, textbooks that publishers wrote specifically to meet the state's new social studies standards, which were written by a conservative state school board. What the review showed was that the books were not only slanted to the right, they were full of misinformation, some of it downright comical.
Link to full article: http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/09/25/school-board-curriculum-conservative-history-column/16159795/
This is a well researched piece to share with others we know who may not understand the full scope of what's been taking place.
Source: Three Afghan soldiers located at Canadian border
Source: Cape Cod Times
CAMP EDWARDS – A high-ranking source tells the Cape Cod Times that the three Afghan soldiers have been located at the Canadian border, apparently seeking asylum.
The source has been briefed on the issue, but could not be quoted on the record because he was not authorized to speak.
U.S. Central Command could not immediately confirm the information.
The Afghan soldiers went missing Saturday at Cape Cod Mall in Hyannis.
Read more: http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20140922/NEWS11/140929937/-1/NEWS
Three senior Afghan military officers who failed to return to a U.S. training base in Cape Cod, Mass., were taken into custody Monday while trying to cross into Canada, according to spokesman for the Massachusetts state police.
State police spokesman David Procopio said federal authorities were interviewing the officers at Rainbow Bridge at Niagara Falls, but provided no further details.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/22/3-afghan-officers-cape-cod-training-exercises-missing-hyannis/16039663/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=usatoday-newstopstories
My first thought is they were attempting to seek political asylum in Canada.
Gas wells linked to water contamination near homes, study finds
Source: The Hill
Faulty gas wells are the main cause of drinking water contamination near homes in Pennsylvania and Texas shale formations, according to a new report.
The study, conducted by scientists from five universities, examined the gas content of over 130 drinking water wells in the two states.
The scientists found that methane leaks from the natural gas drilling operations were more likely to come from the wells dues to a lack of cement surrounding its shaft, or "poor casing."
At every cluster of drinking water wells examined, increased levels of natural gas from the Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania and Barnett shale in Texas were found, the report states.
“People’s water has been harmed by drilling,” said Robert B. Jackson, professor of environmental and earth sciences at Stanford and Duke. "In Texas, we even saw two homes go from clean to contaminated after our sampling began."
Read more: http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/217741-gas-wells-not-fracking-main-source-of-water-contamination-study
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